How to Bring the Ocean

into the Concert Hall

Beethovens Third Symphony and the Aesthetics
of the Sublime*
Henrik Nsted
Eine von Musiksthetik freie oder
befreite Musikanalyse ist eine Illusion.1
Gerold W. Gruber

ven if Peter le Huray called attention to the subject as early as 1979, musicological studies in the aesthetics of the sublime came of age only after Lyotard
revived the interest in the subject.2 Scattered German studies preceded this, but
Jean-Franois Lyotards work undoubtedly prompted a general interest that has lead
to a number of studies in German musicology taking an interest in the sublime (das
Erhabene). Interesting work has also been done in Italian musicology and to a
lesser extent its francophone counterpart. However, anglophone and, in particular, American musicology has seen the most pronounced interest in the field in the
1990s. These studies all testify to a marked musicological attention on the topic; yet,
today there are no entries on Sublime or Erhaben in any of the two major musical
dictionaries.3 By way of comparison, it is worthy of mentioning that literary and
aesthetic periodicals have presented monographic issues on the topic in all major
languages long ago.4
In the musicological studies mentioned above, the aesthetics of the sublime is
considered a field of study belonging to one or more of three areas: historical aesthetics (of music), reception studies, and/or musical analysis. Beyond studies which
* This article has benefited considerably from critical comments and suggestions from Heinrich W.

Schwab and Siegfried Oechsle whom I thank for their expert assistance.
Gerold W. Gruber, Analyse, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn., Sachteil i (Kassel,
1994), 579.
2 Peter le Huray, The Role of Music in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century Aesthetics,
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 105 (1978-79), 90-99. Jean-Franois Lyotards main
contribution is his Leons sur lanalytique du sublime (Paris, 1991). However, his articles Aprs le
sublime, tat de lesthtique, and Le sublime et lavantgarde, reprinted in his Linhumain (Paris,
1988), 147-55 and 101-18 respectively are probably his most influential in the field.
3 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edn., xxiv (London, 2001); Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart, 2nd edn., Sachteil iii (Kassel, 1995).
4 Examples include Revue dhistorie littraire de la France, 86/1 (1986), Studies in Romanticism, 26/2
(1986), Rivista di estetica, 27/2 (1987), and Merkur, 43/9-10 (1989).
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first and foremost present a historical account,5 very roughly, we can identify two
main lines of investigation. On the one hand, there are those who aim at bridging a
study of aesthetics and musical analysis without justifying this bridging by reception
studies.6 And on the other hand, we have those who draw parallels between studies
in aesthetics and reception studies without engaging in musical analysis.7 The main
problem of the epistemological framework of these approaches is that the interaction between the three discursive areas (aesthetics, reception, and analysis) usually
remains missing.8 In this article, I aim at incorporating these three areas of investigation into one argument.
In 1982, when presenting an article on Beethovens third symphony, Lewis Lockwood admitted that [a] new paper on the Eroica calls for justification.9 As two
decades have passed since this claim, at a first glance, it seems even truer today.
However, a lot of things have happened in musicology since the early 1980s, and, in
general, a tendency to develop new perspectives on the musicological canon is dawning. To some extent, this has been dominated by attempts to integrate developments
in other fields of the humanities. It is as a contribution to this trend that the present
article should be considered. My main contention is that an investigation of attempts
to apply the aesthetics of the sublime to music around 1800 will elucidate matters of
Beethovens Eroica Symphony that other modes of investigation fail to see. Thus,
my argument discusses instrumental music only (the conditions under which vocal
music could be considered sublime is not discussed here10), as it is my claim that
this will provide us with the best understanding of the idea of the musical sublime
around 1800.

8
9
10

Recommendable is Michela Garda, Musica sublime. Metamorfosi di unidea nel Settecento musicale
(Milano, 1995). See also C.A.W.B. Wurth, The Musically Sublime: Infinity, Indeterminacy, Irresolvability (Groningen, 2002).
See, for example, Judith L. Schwartz, Periodicity and Passion in the First Movement of Haydns
Farewell Symphony, in Eugene K. Wolf and E.H. Roesner (eds.), Studies in Musical Sources and
Styles: Essays in Honor of Jan LaRue (Madison, 1990), 293-338, or Elaine R. Sisman, Mozart: The
Jupiter Symphony, No. 41 in C major, K. 551 (Cambridge, 1993), esp. 15-20 and 76-79.
See, for example, Mary Sue Morrow, Of Unity and Passion: The Aesthetics of Concert Criticism
in Early Nineteenth-Century Vienna, Nineteenth Century Music, 13/3 (1990), 193-206, or Alexander
H. Shapiro, Drama of an Infinitely Superior Nature: Handels Early English Oratorios and the
Religious Sublime, Music & Letters, 74 (1993), 215-45.
Strictly speaking, this demand is only honoured by one study, viz. Andreas Eichhorn, Beethovens
Neunte Symphonie (Kassel, 1993).
Lewis Lockwood, Eroica Perspectives: Strategy and Design in the First Movement, in Alan
Tyson (ed.), Beethoven Studies 3 (Cambridge, 1982), 85-106.
One recent account on this field is relevant. See Stefanie Steiner, Zwischen Kirche, Bhne und
Konzertsaal. Vokalmusik von Haydns Schpfung bis zur Beethovens Neunter (Kassel, 2001), esp. 53-63
and 128-50.

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I
In his essay Beethoven (1870), Wagner claimed that Beethovens music, historiographically speaking, brought music weit ber das Gebiet des sthetisch Schnen and
into die Sphre des durchaus Erhabenen.11 It is beyond doubt that Wagners point
of view is rooted in his age and it is therefore not unproblematic to transfer his
statement to our time. If we consider the history of the sublime, it soon becomes
clear that an aesthetic distance is manifest.12 Thus, even if it may be claimed that the
sublime has been maintained in the twentieth century by Heidegger and Adorno,
in this context I consider only the aspects important in nineteenth-century musical
aesthetics.13 The change in aesthetic attitudes towards the end of the nineteenth
century in disfavour of the sublime may be illustrated by Benedetto Croces claim
that the sublime belongs to the false quantitative concepts which are really metaphors, flatulent phrases or logical tautologies.14 In the musicological world, this
disfavour is illustrated by the gap of almost a century between Arthur Seidls and
Hermann Stephanis works around 190015 and the next book-length monograph on
the musical sublime, Michela Gardas post-Lyotard Musica Sublime from 1995.16
This makes it clear that a considerable aesthetic gap has to be bridged if we want
to discuss the musical sublime from a nineteenth-century point of view. Considering
this, the main hermeneutical idea of this article may be expressed in Gadamers words
as follows: Historisch denken heit in Wahrheit, die Umsetzung vollziehen, die den
Begriffen der Vergangenheit geschieht, wenn wir in ihnen zu denken suchen.17 It is by
approaching the past by way of our own modes of thinking that we gain an understanding of its cultural manifestations. Therefore, a short historical outline of the
sublime is necessary.
The modern story of the sublime began when Nicolas Boileau-Despraux translated a classical rhetorical treatise into the French Trait du sublime in 1674.18 The
11

12
13
14
15

16
17
18

Richard Wagner, Beethoven, in Richard Wagner. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, ix (Leipzig, 1913), 61-126, at 102. More recently, this view was echoed in Richard Taruskin, Resisting the
Ninth, Nineteenth-Century Music, 12 (1989), 241-56.
A useful survey is offered in Carsten Zelle, Christine Pries, and Craig Kallendorf, Das Erhabene,
in Gert Ueding (ed.), Historisches Wrterbuch der Rhetorik (Tbingen, 1994), ii, 1357-89.
See Jan Rosiek, Maintaining the Sublime: Heidegger and Adorno (Bern, 2000).
Translated by the author from Benedetto Croce, Estetica come scienza dellespressione e linguistica
generale: Teoria e storia (4th rev. edn., Bari, 1912), 107.
Arthur Seidl, Vom Musikalisch-Erhabenen. Ein Beitrag zur Aesthetik der Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1907),
expanded from Vom Musikalisch-Erhabenen. Prolegomena zur sthetik der Tonkunst (Regensburg,
1887); Hermann Stephani, Das Erhabene insonderheit in der Tonkunst und das Problem der Form im
Musikalisch-Schnen und -Erhabenen (Leipzig, 1903; 2nd rev. edn., Leipzig, 1907).
Garda, Musica sublime.
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (4th edn., Tbingen, 1975), 374-75.
Some trends in French thought predated Boileau-Despraux, though. See Thodore A. Litman,
Le Sublime en France 1660-1714 (Paris, 1971).

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immense popularity of this translation is expressed in the fact that at least eighteen
editions were printed in France and a number of English translations followed one
of which reached fourteen editions itself. In the treatise, then falsely ascribed to
Cassius Longinus (c. 220-73) but today believed to have been written in the first
century AC by an author unknown to us, a description of the rhetorical phenomenon of the sublime is aimed at. In Boileaus translation, the author claims that it is
by the sublime that the great poets and writers have won their prizes and that it is
a means of persuasion which uses an elevating quality of language rather than strictly
logical elements: it does not really persuade, but it ravishes, transports, and produces a certain admiration mixed with astonishment and surprise.19 Interpreting
this rhetorical phenomenon in an aesthetic context, Boileau writes in his prface that
by the sublime Longinus does not understand what the orators call the sublime
style; rather, he understands it as the extraordinary and the wondrous which strikes
in speech and which makes a work elevate, ravish, and transport.20
Thus, Boileau left open the possibility that a work of art can be sublime in an
aesthetic sense. However, in the writings that emphatically established the term in Western aesthetics, Edmund Burkes Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and Beautiful (1757) and Immanuel Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), the sublime is mostly discussed in terms of nature. In his Enquiry, Burke gathered a number of
thoughts present in British aesthetics, one of them being the explicit opposition of the
beautiful and the sublime. Burke highlighted the remarkable contrast between the
two: sublime objects are vast in their dimensions, beautiful ones are comparatively
small; beauty should be smooth, and polished; the [sublime] rugged and negligent.21
Phenomenologically speaking, the sublime and the beautiful are divided from each
other as follows: the beautiful is achieved through pleasure and the sublime through
delight understood as the sensation that accompanies the removal of pain and
danger.22 Thus, the delight of the sublime is the feeling of some terror being removed. Burke provides a list of phenomena considered able to cause this sense of
terror, the three most important being obscurity, infinity, and difficulty.23
Kant developed two senses of the sublime, viz. the mathematical and the dynamical. The mathematical sublime is related to the size of an object. Usually, when we
behold something, we try to find some kind of measurement that allows us to grasp
the (size of the) object. Kant is interested in the situation when we are confronted
with objects that are ber alle Vergleichung gro and the situation when we meet
19 Translated by the author from Nicolas Boileau-Despraux, uvres compltes, ed. Franoise Escal

(Paris, 1966), 341.

20 Ibid., 338.
21 Edmund Burke, Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful and

Other Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. David Womersley (London, 1757, 2nd edn. 1759; London,
1998), part III, section 27. As they are short and easily identifiable, I refer to the sections in Burke
rather than pages. In this quotation, I have changed Burkes use of great into sublime. Throughout his Enquiry, he uses the terms interchangeably.
22 Ibid., I/4.
23 Ibid., II/3, II/8-9, and II/12.

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eine Gre, die blo sich selber gleich ist.24 The dynamical sublime, on the other
hand, is caused by our encounter with might and vastness in nature. Examples include hurricanes, volcanoes, and der grenzenlose Ozean in Emprung gesetzt.25
Thus, Burke and Kant construe the sublime as the opposition of the beautiful
and from this point on we have two clearly defined aesthetic discourses running
parallel in Western aesthetics.26 An important element in both Kants and Burkes
perception of the sublime is the idea of a cognitive frustration in the sublime experience. The experiences are almost beyond our concepts. For example, the overwhelming first impression of the countless stars on the clear sky makes us almost
dizzy in its sheer endlessness. However, we are able to overcome the experience after
the first impression when the cognitive frustration is surmounted.
Beethovens musical world also saw an interest in the aesthetics of the sublime.
However, the most important contributions to the debate on the musical sublime
around 1800 departed not directly from Kant. Whereas it is a much-debated question whether Kant believed that only nature could be sublime, it is a fact that he was
notoriously hostile to music.27 This meant that, historiographically speaking, he had
to be mediated by Schiller, who unequivocally claimed that [d]a aber der ganze
Zauber des Erhabenen und Schnen nur in dem Schein und nicht in dem Inhalt liegt,
so hat die Kunst alle Vorteile der Natur, ohne ihre Fesseln mit ihr zu teilen, before
the sublime could be applied to music.28 And it is from this claim that we should
contemplate the two articles which stand out as the most important when discussing
the musical sublime around 1800, one by the editor of the Allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung, Friedrich Rochlitz, and another by Christoph Friedrich Michaelis.
Friedrich Rochlitz (1769-1842) mentioned the sublime on several occasions, but
the only extensive treatment of the subject is found in his article Vom zweckmigen
Gebrauch der Mittel der Tonkunst.29 In a sense, Rochlitz used Schillers contention
24 Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Berlin and Liebau, 1790; Hamburg, 2001), 25, B81 and B84.
25 Ibid., 28, B104.
26 For an elaborate account of the idea of a dualistic division in aesthetics from Boileau-Despraux to

Nietzsche, see Carsten Zelle, Die doppelte sthetik der Moderne (Stuttgart, 1995).

27 Edward A. Lippman, A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln and London, 1992), 133,

points out that, paradoxically, Kants inadequate treatment of music actually brought post-Kantian
musical aesthetics to a fruition.
28 Friedrich Schiller, Smtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert G. Gpfert (2nd edn., Mnchen,
1960), v, 808.
29 This article, Vom zweckmigen Gebrauch der Mittel der Tonkunst, was printed in Rochlitz
own Fr Freunde der Tonkunst, but two earlier versions appeared before that. The first version of
the article was printed as Rhapsodische Gedanken ber die zweckmige Benutzung der Materie
der Musik (erroneously signed Friedrich Rechlitz) in C.F. Wielands Weimar-based literary periodical Der Neue teutsche Merkur, 9/10 (Oct. 1798), 153-71. Later, it was printed in four parts in
Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 8/1 (2 Oct. 1805), 3-10; 8/4 (23 Oct. 1805), 49-60; 8/13 (25 Dec. 1805),
193-201; 8/19 (15 Jan. 1806), 243-49. In the following I quote the version in Friedrich Rochlitz, Fr
Freunde der Tonkunst (2nd edn., Leipzig, 1830), ii, 139-204. Later revisions of the article include
new musical examples. Here, it is worthy of mentioning that Beethovens Eroica symphony is
mentioned in the 1830 version (p. 173) but, for obvious reasons, it is not included in the 1798
version.

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that the sublime could appear in the arts: Wenn die Natur durch solche Eigenschaften ihrer Werke jene Empfindung erregt: so mssen die Eigenschaften der Kunstwerke, wodurch dieselbe Empfindung erregt werden soll, etwas jenen Aehnliches
haben und sich durch Vergleichung finden lassen.30 Rochlitz describes sublime music
as characterised by:
Ausweichungen in fremde Tonarten aber nicht bizarre, sondern khne, auf solche,
die nicht allmhlich, abgeglttet, sondern schnell und fest, nicht knstlich gewunden,
sondern einfach hervortreten; wir kommen auf lang und voll gehaltene, nicht kurz und
schnell vorbeirauschende Noten; auf Begleitung, die nicht verziert, nicht reich figuriert
ist ... sondern einfach ...31

We note Rochlitz extensive use of negative definitions. He does not describe which
kinds of deviations that he considers sublime; instead, he approaches the subject from
the negative side. He writes that the deviations should be into fremde Tonarten (unfamiliar keys) and that they should be of the kinds that nicht allmhlich hervortreten
(do not appear gradually). This suggests that Rochlitz considered the sublime in music
to be something which opposed the established tradition. Only if you accept certain
modulations as familiar does it make sense to call others fremde (unfamiliar). And
it is only if you expect normal deviations into other keys to appear gradually and
smoothly that you will notice when others appear schnell und fest (fast and firm)
instead. We also recognise the idea of cognitive frustration in Rochlitz text:
Musik im Charakter des Groen32 verlangt ein Gedrng von einer Menge, dem ersten
Anschein nach unvereinbarer Melodieen und Wendungen der Harmonie, die aber doch
zu einem melodischen und harmonischen Ganzen verknpft werden ...33

This idea is also seen in the writings of the other important contributor to the discussion of musical sublimity around 1800. In his Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst (17951800), Christian Friedrich Michaelis (1770-1834) was one of the first music aestheticians to make an attempt to develop an aesthetics of music explicitly from Kant.34
However, the most useful account of his idea of sublime music is seen in his 1805
article Einige Bemerkungen ber das Erhabene in der Musik from Berlinische Musikalische Zeitung.35 In this article, Michaelis begins by opposing the beautiful and the
30 Rochlitz, Vom zweckmigen Gebrauch, 151.
31 Ibid., 154.
32 Rochlitz, ibid., 149-50, offers four aesthetic categories: [1] das Erhabene, [2] das Groe (Starke,

Erschtternde), [3] das Anmuthige (Liebliche), und [4] das Niedliche und Zierliche. However, as
Eichhorn, Beethovens Neunte Symphonie, 84, notes, these four can be divided into an opposition in
twos that corresponds the dichotomy between the beautiful and the sublime. In this interpretation, the sublime (das Erhabene) and the great (das Groe) becomes one category.
33 Rochlitz, Vom zweckmigen Gebrauch, 169.
34 This, like other writings by Michaelis, is today conveniently available in Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Ueber den Geist der Tonkunst und andere Schriften, ed. Lothar Schmidt (Chemnitz, 1997).
35 Christian Friedrich Michaelis, Einige Bemerkungen ber das Erhabene der Musik, Berlinische
Musikalische Zeitung, 1/46 (1805), 179-81. Michaelis actually published a more elaborate article on
the subject a few years earlier, Ueber das Erhabene in der Musik, which appeared in the Leipzig-

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sublime in music. Whereas musical beauty is present when die Tne ohne Schwierigkeit sich zueinander gesellen,36 the sublime always has an element of cognitive
frustration:
Wo aber die einzelnen Tne so lange, so einfrmig tnen, oder mit so groen Unterbrechungen, oder so erschtternd heftig sich hren lassen, oder so tiefsinnig mit andern
verwickelt sind, da die Einbildungskraft des Hrers sich mchtig aufgehalten sieht,
wenn sie das Ganze auffassen will, da sie gleichsam an einer grenzenlosen Tiefe
schwebt, dann findet das Erhabene Statt.37

This cognitive frustration is achieved when the music presents zu groe Mannichfaltigkeit, indem ... unendlich viel Eindrcke in zu geschwinder Zeit vorbeieilen,
und das Gemth in der rauschenden Fluth der Tne all rasch fortgerissen wird.38 To
some extent, we also recognise the negative definition in Michaelis. When he claims
that the composer also expresses sublimity through the marvellous (Wunderbare),
Michaelis purports [d]ies entspringt aus dem Ungewohnten, Befremdenen, mchtig
Ueberraschenden, oder Frappanten in der harmonischen und rhythmischen Fortschreitung.39
Thus, both Rochlitz and Michaelis describe the musical sublime as having an
element of cognitive frustration achieved in terms of deviations from established
musical norms. How these phenomena unfold themselves in practice remains unanswered, though. Both Rochlitz and to a larger extent Michaelis provide examples
of works which they consider sublime. In this connection, the most important thing
to notice is the gap remaining between Rochlitz and Michaelis intentional definitions (the outline of musical features) and their extensional examples: neither of
them explains in details how the musical sublime works. In a larger perspective, the
most interesting area is the problem of how to unite the idea of the sublime with the
concept of a work of art. How does Burkes obscurity, infinity, and difficulty amalgamate with the genres of music? Or, if we are to depart from Kants wording, we
may ask: how do we bring the ocean, a volcano, or a hurricane into the concert hall?
Thus, in order to understand how the musical sublime manifested itself around
1800, we have two gaps to bridge: firstly, the gap between contemporary outlines of
musical features and examples chosen; secondly, we have the epistemological gap
which was expressed in Gadamers idea of thinking in the terms of the past (see
above). It is my claim that the problems of these two gaps centre on a core of
questions which can be answered by a modern musical analysis of a piece of music

36
37
38
39

based Monatschrift fr Deutsche, 1 (1801), 42-52. However, the fact that the 1805 article, along with
a number of other articles by Michaelis, was chosen for reprint in the Wiener allgemeine musikalische
Zeitung, 1/45 (17 Nov. 1813), 690-93 (under the title Ueber das Erhabene der Musik), suggests
that this version expresses Michaelis more considered opinion on the subject.
Michaelis, Einige Bemerkungen ber das Erhabene, 179.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 180.

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which was considered sublime in its time. With this in mind, I will try to answer
both of these questions by identifying the Eroica as sublime and, subsequently, by
analysing the first movement of this work.

II
The Leipziger Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung had, from its beginning in 1798-99,
occasional reviews from Vienna and in 1804 a regular correspondent with a Viennese column was established. This correspondent, whose identity remains unknown
to us, reviewed early performances of the Eroica on three occasions. Even though
these reviews only use the word sublime (Erhaben) once, they describe the symphony in terms that are remarkably close to the way that this concept was usually
described.40 Let me give some quotations to indicate the general tone of these essays. Having heard the first semi-public performance (20 January 1805), on 13 February the reviewer wrote:
Diese lange, fr die Ausfhrung usserst schwierige Komposition ist eigentlich eine
sehr weit ausgefhrte, khne und wilde Phantasie. Es fehlt ihr gar nicht an frappanten
und schnen Stellen, in denen man den energischen, talentvollen Geist ihres Schpfers
erkennen muss: sehr oft aber scheint sie sich ganz ins Regellose zu verlieren. ... Ref.
gehrt gewiss zu Hrn. v. Beethovens aufrichtigsten Verehrern; aber bey dieser Arbeit
muss er doch gestehen, des Grellen und Bizarren allzuviel zu finden, wodurch die Uebersicht usserst erschwert wird und die Einheit beynahe ganz verloren geht.41

In his second review after the first public performance (5 April 1805) the reviewer
states that he finds no reason to change his point of view regarding the composition.
Allerdings hat diese neue B.[eethoven]sche Arbeit grosse und khne Ideen, und wie
man von dem Genie dieses Komponisten erwarten kann, eine grosse Kraft der Ausfhrung; aber die Sinfonie wrde unendlich gewinnen, (sie dauert eine ganze Stunde) wenn
sich B.[eethoven] entschliessen wollte sie abzukrzen, und in das Ganze mehr Licht,
Klarheit und Einheit zu bringen; Eigenschaften, welche die Mozartschen Sinfonieen
aus G moll und C dur, die Beethovenschen aus C und D, und die Eberlschen aus Es
und D, bey allem Ideenreichthume, bey aller Verwebung der Instrumente, und bey
allem Wechsel berraschender Modulationen durchaus niemals verlassen.42

In his third review (of a concert sometime in 1807), the correspondent, having just
mentioned eine schne Haydnsche Sinfonie aus D (most likely one of the Salomon
40 On the early performances of the Eroica, see Tomislav Volek and Jaroslav Macek, Beethovens Re-

hearsals at the Lobkowitzs, Musical Times, 127 (1986), 75-79; Martin Geck and Peter Schleuning,
Geschrieben auf Bonaparte: Beethovens Eroica: Revolution, Reaktion, Rezeption (Reinbek bei Hamburg,
1989); Peter Schleuning, Das Urauffhrungsdatum von Beethovens Sinfonia eroica , Die Musikforschung, 44 (1991), 356-59; Thomas Sipe, Beethoven: Eroica Symphony (Cambridge, 1998).
41 Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 7/20 (13 Feb. 1805), 321.
42 Ibid., 7/31 (1 May 1805), 501.

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symphonies) and a feurige, tiefbewegte Mozartsche [Sinfonie] aus G moll43 (from

the description it is more likely to be KV 183 than KV 550), compares these to the
Eroica and explicitly refers to the sublime:
Noch schwieriger ist wol die grosse Beethovensche Sinfonie aus Es, welche, von dem
Komponisten selbst dirigirt, sehr vielen Beyfall erhielt. Ref. muss, troz allem, was ber
dieses Kunstwerk geschrieben worden, seiner, gleich bey der ersten Darstellung geusserten Meynung treu bleiben, dass die Sinfonie allerdings des Erhabenen sowol als
des Schnen sehr Vieles enthalte, dass dies aber auch mit manchem Grellen und allzu
Breiten vermischt sey, und nur bey einer Umarbeitung die reine Form eines vollendeten Kunstwerks erhalten knne.44

However, in this context it is the wording of the critique of the composition that is
interesting because, even without references to the word sublime, it is striking that
the aesthetics of the sublime seem to form the aesthetic backdrop of the reviews. Let
me illustrate my point by translating some of the topics which reverberate throughout
these three reviews. Firstly, the extraordinary length of the work was noted: This
long composition (first review) might benefit if Beethoven decided to shorten it
(second review) so that it would not appear so long-winded (third review). Secondly,
the difficulty in both the performance (first) and most importantly in the perception of the work (third) receives attention. Thirdly, the work is considered beyond the limits of the established norms of the symphonic genre: It is considered
a very extensively developed, audacious and wild fantasy, often lost in the disorderly
(first) that uses the shrill (first and third review) and bizarre all too often (first).
Fourthly, as a result of this musical approach of composing like a fantasy the overview is made most difficult (first) and the pure form (third) is lost; with this, unity
almost gets lost entirely (first) a thing which Beethovens earlier symphonies never
lose (second). And finally, we notice the advice from the reviewer to Beethoven that
only a reworking (third) and a decision to shorten it in order to bring more light,
clarity, and unity (second) into the work would improve it.
These topics more or less word the same experience. As the reviewer obviously
finds the work difficult to perceive, they are all related to the difficulty of grasping
the symphony in the first perception. Obviously, there are parallels to the psychological processes of the perception of the sublime as described earlier. Thus, these
reviews seem to describe the symphony in terms of the sublime without using the
word itself. Only in one instance is the term itself invoked, and then not explicitly
related to the aesthetics of the sublime as it was outlined above.45
43 Ibid., 10/15 (6 Jan. 1808), 238-39.
44 Ibid.
45 However, a reference to the sublime more in line with the aesthetic discourse was made in a

concert review in 1807 (Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 9/18 (28 Jan. 1807), 285) when the first
movement of the Eroica was described as being imponierend und voll Kraft und Erhabenheit.
Similarly, in a review (Zeitung fr die elegante Welt, 7/35 (2 Mar. 1807), 276) of a piano arrangement for fourhanded playing of the symphony (by August Eberhard Mller) the adjective erhaben is used, and the anonymous reviewer describes the Eroica in terms considerably more positive

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From the two previous sections, we are able to conclude that the Eroica fell within
the semantic field of the sublime. It is important to understand that the way I have
substantiated that the Eroica was considered sublime in principle could have been
done for other pieces of music. The reason that I chose this symphony is that its
reception history presents itself as an obvious paradigm of the sublime. But the
process of documenting this claim could have been carried out for other works.
It might, at a first glance, seem necessary to answer the question whether Beethoven himself had the aesthetics of the sublime in mind when he composed the symphony or if he had any knowledge of this aesthetic discourse at all. We know that
he knew at least some parts of Sulzers very influential Allgemeine Theorie, which had
an entry on Erhaben.46 This line of thought is not irrelevant, of course. But (literary)
criticism in the twentieth century has generally seen a move away from the idea that
it is primarily the intention of the author which determines the meaning of a text.
To name a few important exponents: Advocates of New Criticism claimed in 1946
that the evaluation of the work of art remains public; the work is measured against
something outside the author,47 and Roland Barthes further developed this idea
when, in 1968, he claimed the death of the author.48 Without space for discussing
this in depth, I recognize that, by denying that it is necessary for my argument to
answer the question of Beethovens intention with the symphony, I attach myself to
these traditions. My point is that the Eroica was perceived as a sublime work of art,
and it is from this claim that an analysis can depart.

III
The main point in the previous section was also made by Mary Sue Morrow who
used the Eroica to illustrate that music reviewers in the early nineteenth century
acknowledged the presence of the sublime when they found passion in a work.49
And, more generally, Dahlhaus has interpreted the aesthetic backdrop of E.T.A. Hoff-

46

47
48
49

than those of the early correspondent in Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung: Sie gehrt zu den wenigen
Sinfonien, die mit ihrer geistvollen Energie die Phantasie des Zuhrers in erhabenen Schwung
setzen. Of course, these references to the sublime are made only in passing and they do not
include a developed wording of the term which is necessary to an elucidation of the concept.
However, they may serve to reinforce my argument that the Eroica reception can be seen as being
situated within the paradigm of the sublime.
See Richard A. Kramer, Beethoven and Carl Heinrich Graun, in Alan Tyson (ed.), Beethoven Studies 1 (New York, 1973), 18-44. In his article, Exploring Sulzers Allgemeine Theorie as a Source
Used by Beethoven, Beethoven Newsletter, 2/1 (1987), 1-7, Owen Jander tried to develop this idea
further but without concrete evidence and, besides Kramers work, today the connection between
Sulzers work and Beethoven remains conjectural.
Monroe C. Beardsley and W.K. Wimsatt, The Intentional Fallacy, reprinted in W.K. Wimsatt, The
Verbal Icon (London, 1970), 10. This essay appeared originally in Sewanee Review, 54 (1946).
Roland Barthes, La mort de lauteur, Mantia, 5 (1968). Numerous later reprints and translations
are available.
Morrow, Of Unity and Passion, 205. Morrow does not validate her investigations analytically, though.

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manns famous homage to Beethovens instrumental music as the aesthetics of the

sublime.50 However, these studies consider only the reception of the music not the
music itself; and thereby they implicitly suggest that the change in the idea of music
took place in the aesthetic sphere rather than in the musical sphere. In the same vein,
Mark Evan Bonds recently claimed that the change in musical aesthetics around
1800 was first and foremost due to a change in philosophy rather than one in music
when he stressed that the early Romantics were the first generation to have at its
disposal a philosophical framework in which to express such powerful emotions without embarrassment.51 However, in my opinion it is in the study of music itself that
we see the most interesting perspectives of the aesthetics of the sublime. So far, I
have used the reception of the Eroica Symphony only to justify that it can be considered sublime in the Kantian sense. The most interesting aspects of the musical sublime appear when we use modern musical analysis to contemplate how the reception
came about.
The Eroica has been analysed in numerous ways which may be related to the
aesthetics of the sublime. Its obvious new features (qua a symphony) has been
discussed and it has been seen as an instance of Beethovens new way.52 This
newness has an obvious affinity to the sublime and in an attempt to characterise
the Eroica as an expression of an extreme readiness of post-[French]Revolution generations to experience the new, the extraordinary, and the progressive, Reinhold
Brinkmann implicitly puts newness on an equal footing with the sublime.53 I find
this equation too simplistic. Therefore, let me demonstrate my way of using the
aesthetics of the sublime in musical analysis by highlighting a number of features
from the first movement of the Eroica. Obviously, numerous analytical approaches
to the task of localising the sublime in the symphony are possible. The approach
that I present in this article departs from the opposition of stable and unstable
50 Carl Dahlhaus, E.T.A. Hoffmanns Beethoven-Kritik und die sthetik des Erhabenen, Archiv fr

Musikwissenschaft, 38 (1981), 79-92.

Mark Evan Bonds, Idealism and the Aesthetics of Instrumental Music at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 50 (1997), 387-420, esp. 392-93.
52 For discussions of new features in Eroica, see Egon Voss, Beethovens Eroica und die Gattung
der Sinfonie, in Carl Dahlhaus et al (eds.), Bericht ber den Internationalen musikwissenschaftlichen
Kongress Bonn 1970 (Kassel, 1971), 600-3; Peter Schleuning, Beethoven in alter Deutung: Der neue
Weg mit der Sinfonia eroica , Archiv fr Musikwissenschaft, 44 (1987), 165-94; Peter Schleuning,
3. Symphonie Es-dur, Eroica, op. 55, in Albrecht Riethmller, Carl Dahlhaus, and Alexander L.
Ringer (eds.), Beethoven: Interpretationen seiner Werke (Laaber, 1994), i, 386-400. According to his
friend Wenzell Krumpholz, Beethoven proclaimed somewhere between the beginning of 1801 and
April of 1802 (i.e. at the approximate time of the genesis of the Eroica) that from today on I shall
take a new way, cf. Oscar Sonneck, Beethoven: Impressions of Contemporaries (New York, 1926), 26. It
has been much debated what caused this declaration and what the actual effect of it was. For
discussions of the Eroica as an expression of this new way, see Philip G. Downs, Beethovens
New Way and the Eroica, Musical Quarterly, 56 (1970), 585-604; Carl Dahlhaus, Beethovens
neuer Weg , Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts fr Musikforschung Preuischer Kulturbesitz, 1974
(Berlin, 1975), 46-62; and Schleuning, Beethoven in alter Deutung.
53 Reinhold Brinkmann, In the Time(s) of the Eroica, in Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg
(eds.), Beethoven and His World (Princeton, 2000), 1-26.
51

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passages. But it is important to realize that this analytical strategy is only one possibility out of many.54
With the outline of the aesthetic category of the sublime in mind, we may very
roughly extract an analytically usable opposition between the sublime and the beautiful from the writings discussed. Beauty is characterised by clarity, finiteness and
effortlessness. Opposing this, the sublime is characterised by obscurity, infiniteness,
and difficulty. Thus, it is obviously in the latter that we should find the aesthetic
frustration expressed in the early reviews of the work.
In order to present my basic analytical approach, we may consider the first famous bars (Ex. 1). We are introduced to the main motif of the movement, a small Eb
major triad static melody supported by quaver accompaniment in the violins. As this
accompaniment stays on the same tonic triad, this signals stability and clarity. However, this stability is broken after only four bars when, in b. 7, the melody descends
to c #. This creates a harmonic tension as the upper parts stay on their notes with a
diminished triad as a result the harmony becomes clouded, to use Donald Toveys
words.55 This harmonic instability is immediately followed by a rhythmic instability
as the first violins begin a strongly syncopated theme on g.

b b 3
b
& 4
f
? b 34
bb

..
!
p

..
!

..
!

..
!

? b .
bb

p
.

j
j

..
!

cresc.

#.

cresc.
p (etc.)


.

. .

b .
&b b

j
.
.
!

Example 1. Ludwig van Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, first movement, bb. 1-15
(reduction).

These first bars contain what is to become the central drama of the movement, viz.
the opposition (or dialectic struggle, as I will word it below) between stability and
instability. Harmonically and melodically, the calm and stable Eb major motif
opposes the ambiguous and unstable diminished triad; rhythmically, the main motifs
accentuation of the first beat (the root falls on all the strong beats in bb. 3-6)
54 The following observations are based on an extensive analysis of the first movement of Eroica,

published in Henrik Nsted, Eine khne und wilde Phantasie: An Essay on Beethovens Third
Symphony and the Aesthetics of the Sublime, MA thesis (University of Copenhagen, 2002), 11661. As it is obviously impossible to abstract this work here, I concentrate on the most important
results of the analysis.
55 Donald Francis Tovey, Essays in Musical Analysis (London, 1935), i, 30.

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Beethovens Third Symphony

opposes the syncopated first violins in b. 7.56 Thus, in the opposition between bb. 3-6
and 7-8, we have an opposition, which manifests itself in all musical parameters:
harmony, melody, and rhythm.
The different types of instability work together to an unprecedented extent. The
main effect of the use of instability is very close to the cognitive frustration, which I
extracted to be one of the main characteristics of the Kantian sublime. Thus, we see
that the extensive use of destabilizing affects in the symphony is very likely to be the
main reason that the reviewer saw the Eroica as eine khne und wilde Phantasie and
the link to the aesthetics of the sublime becomes obvious. However, the destabilizing musical features are soon countered when, after this instance of instability, we
gradually work our way back to the stability of the main motif. This is achieved on
all musical levels in several stages. At first, harmonically, the diminished triad is resolved in b. 9; rhythmically, the accompanying quaver figures in the second violins
(bb. 9 ff.) establish a reliable sense of rhythm. Then, as they change to Ab in b. 10, we
become aware that the first violins are actually playing a theme with some melodic
significance. And in b. 11, the cellos reach Eb, the chord of the main theme. However, as the first violins have a suspension, we are not yet back. In b. 12 the cellos
change to the subdominant (on the first beat) and, after a parallel movement with
the first violins, when the dominant arrives, the sense of the goal being within reach
is strongly emphasized. This is supported by the quaver figure of the middle strings
and, particularly, by the strong cadential melodic first violins (I will discuss the use
of these cadential patterns below).
This re-stabilizing move may be used to illustrate a main point in the use of the
aesthetics of the sublime in music. If, very roughly, we interpret the destabilizing
passages as pointing towards the sublime, the passages of stability can be characterized in terms of the aesthetics of beauty. The problem of the use of instability is that
its musical manifestation is a direct antithesis to our concept of art (I will discuss
this further in the last part of this article). This suggests that the sublime cannot
become the sole aesthetic base of a composition; in a sense, it has to work together
with the aesthetics of beauty. The way this works may be illustrated by a term coined
by Judith L. Schwartz in her analysis of Haydns Farewell Symphony. In this, she talks
about a dialectical struggle in the opposition between the structural elements in the
work.57 I freely use her term to designate the interplay between the musical equivalents of the sublime and beautiful in order to make it explicit that it is in the interaction between the two antagonistic aesthetic spheres that the musical sublime becomes possible.
Stability and key regained in b. 15, once more we hear the main motif in Eb major,
this time in horn, clarinets, and flutes with a lower accompaniment in the cellos and
56 The forward-looking character of these first bars was noted very early in the reception of the

symphony. In the very first review of the Eroica, the reviewer providentially stated that this passage bereitet der Verf.[asser, i.e. the composer] den Zuhrer vor, oft in der Harmonieenfolge
angenehm getuscht zu werden, Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung, 9/21 (18 Feb. 1807), 321.
57 Schwartz, Periodicity and Passion, 329.

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second violins. By being played in a more orthodox harmonized way (the accompaniment being played below the melody), the motif gains a new solidity which
allows it to be developed: the last part is repeated twice, only higher in the scale.
Then, apparently, in b. 22, we hear a modulation to the dominant and we expect a
second subject to appear. However, no theme appears and instead we hear a long
passage of metrical irregularity, which rhythmically is a strong opposition to the
main motif (Ex. 2). Whereas the main theme emphatically stresses the first beat, the
bars 23 to 35 involves a long line of complicated modifications of the meter. The
metrical irregularity of the first violins is supported by the wind players accompaniment which serves to strengthen the effect.

b 3
&b b 4

23

? b b 34
b

.
.

.
.

b n

n
b n

..

J
S j

S
b

S
b

S fp


J

S
J

(run-up-figure
30

&

bbb

? bb

S S

S S

cresc.

J
(etc.)

Example 2. Ludwig van Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, first movement, bb. 23-37
(reduction).

At the same time, the double basses move to Ab and we realize that the passage was
merely on the dominant and not in it.58 Thus, by disappointing the expectation of
a second subject, the metrical irregularity works all the more efficient to create
ambiguity and instability. In bb. 33 and 34 the second beat is stressed in almost all
parts; this illustrates that, by this point, the original first beat has been so obscured that we no longer know where it is. The metrical irregularity continues
until b. 35 when, just as the carpet is just about to be pulled completely away
below the listener, we are saved by a strong scale-based melodic pattern, which
leads to a cadence in b. 37.
This is an example of what I call a run-up figure. As these figures play a crucial
role in the opposition between stability and instability in the Eroica, let me explain
how they work. These figures have been noted by Walter Riezler who, in his excellent analysis of the Eroica, refers to them as Achtelfiguren ... die rein kadenzierende
Funktion haben and vorwrtsdrngenden kadenzierenden Achtelfiguren.59 Lewis
58 Downs, Beethovens New Way , 591, ascribes this turn of phrase to Tovey.
59 Walter Riezler, Beethoven (5th edn., Berlin and Zurich, 1942), 275.

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Lockwood refers to them as strongly articulated cadential figures and identifies

seven of them in the exposition.60 I prefer the term run-up figures as they are
melodic figures in quavers which, by utilizing a strong goal-oriented scale pattern
that lands at a downbeat, serve to stress important formal measures.61 Neither Riezler
nor Lockwood ascribes these figures the importance which I think they have. However, if we contemplate the Eroica as a dialectic struggle between the sublime and
the beautiful their importance becomes crucial.
Let me illustrate my point by referring to the passage, which I have just described. The metrical irregularity and the harmonic disappointment both contribute
to a certain musical obscurity. By threatening the rhythmic element of music so
thoroughly, the music is in danger of falling apart. It is obvious that, in order not to
overdo this effect, there has to be some way out of musical obscurity. The run-up
figure beginning in b. 35 leads us this way out. The figure establishes a strong
harmonic drive by emphasizing F and B b in the basses in bb. 35 and 36 respectively
(a II-V pattern) and, at the same time, the rhythm is, to some extent, re-established.
However, the most efficient musical effect is achieved in the highly goal-oriented
drive of the melodic pattern. In the figure in b. 36, the two important melodic lines
(see, for example, the first and second violins) are made up of pure scales moving
directly towards the tonic (in the violins, strength is added by the use of tremolo).
Thus, when reaching the tonic at the first beat of b. 37, the tonic could hardly be
more emphatically underlined. And, as they always reach their goal, the run-up figures in the Eroica do not disappoint the listener.62
However, it is not only run-up figures that establish order after the potentially
chaotic passages. After a melodically weak second subject in the exposition, we hear
a long closing passage (bb. 99 ff.) which, lasting almost a third of the exposition, may
be seen almost as a compendium of musical effects designed to build up tension.
This includes a passage which, referring to the Kantian term, I call mathematical
sublime. Kant described this type of sublime experience in terms of a meeting with
incomprehensability and infiniteness and in Michaelis interpretation this sublime
manifested itself when music had zu groe Mannichfaltigkeit, indem ... unendlich
viel Eindrcke in zu geschwinder Zeit vorbeieilen, und das Gemth in der rauschenden Fluth der Tne all rasch fortgerissen wird.63
This description fits the music in a part of the closing passage (Ex. 3, p. 32).
From b. 117 the complexity of the melodic line increases as every other quaver becomes a lower leading note of the following note. And this complexity is further
increased when the leading note idea is transformed into a full harmonic idea when,
60 Lockwood, Eroica Perspectives, 97.
61 As these figures might also move downwards in one or more of the voices, the up in run-up

should not be taken literally. To avoid confusion: run-up translates into German Anlauf or
French lan.
62 Of course, as Lockwood ( Eroica Perspectives) notes, the run-up figure ending in b. 65 does
not land on a strong chord but on a half-diminished seventh chord.
63 Michaelis, Einige Bemerkungen ber das Erhabene, 179.

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b 3 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
& b b 4 # n n # n b n b n #
# n b n b n #
(strings)
S
.
.
.
? b b 34

. n . b .
# . n n . . .
b
.
.

117

. n . b .
.
b b # n n b b bn
b
&

.
n . n
n

n n ##
n n
!!! !! !
. # . . n . n . b .
(+ woodwinds)

.
. .
.
. .
. b
b

(full orchestra)
S S S S
S S p (etc.)

? b . # . . . . n . N . # . . . b . n . n . . n . n . .
bb

123

.
. b
b

! ! ! ! ! ! ! n ! !b ! !# !
n b #
S
S
S
. . . . n . . . . . .
. # n .

.
b .

b n

Example 3. Ludwig van Beethoven, Eroica Symphony, first movement, bb. 117-32
(reduction).

in bb. 119-21, the harmony changes on every quaver as intermediary dominants are
inserted on the offbeat quavers. At the same time, the rhythm begins to counter the
basic rhythm when it accentuates every fourth quaver (every other crotchet, that is)
in a hemiola pattern. In short, harmonically, melodically and rhythmically, this passage is so complicated that it almost inevitably leads to the cognitive frustration
outlined in the writings on the sublime.
A run-up figure appears only in b. 122; but this time it is not immediately followed by a stable passage. From b. 123 we hear what Riezler called die gewaltttigste Synkopenstelle aller bisherigen Musik.64 In bb. 123-27 the two last beats of
each bar are stressed while the first beat is empty. And harmonically, in every bar
these two beats constitute a dominant-tonic progression with the tonic falling on
the third beat of the bar! The harmony, of course, changes but this is done without
any feeling of moving forward: the short-sighted dominant-tonic movement with
circular ever-changing tonics results in a loss of harmonic drive. No themes are heard
and, as it is played with all possible noise from the brass (as Grove says); the result
is an extremely strong challenge of the perception of the music.65 It is almost
unavoidable that we loose track of the beat. Not until b. 129 do we hear a chord on
the first beat and even then we are still in confusion because whereas the harmony
changed for every new chord before, it now remains the same for six beats; the
harmonic short-sightedness turns into a harmonic standstill. Furthermore, just as we
were beginning to figure out the musical system of the complex rhythmic pattern,
the rhythm changes into a new counter-rhythm which stresses every other crotchet.
The feeling of loosing the beat is strongly contributory to the feeling of the music
being beyond our reach. The way the rhythmic system is changed at the moment
when we have had the chance to figure it out results in a feeling of being unable to
64 Riezler, Beethoven, 276.
65 George Grove, Beethoven and his Nine Symphonies (1st edn. 1896; New York, 1962), 62.

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grasp the music. To some extent, the rhythmical tension is broken in b. 132. The
abrupt and short sighted harmonic progression of bb. 123-31 is replaced by a harmonic progression which, by way of a chromatic movement in the bass (from F in
b. 132 all the way to B b in b. 139), obviously works as part of a longer phrase (eight
bars).66 Thus, in opposition to the melodically defined run-up figures, this time, we
see a harmonically controlled way out of the sublime chaos.
Another type of musical sublimity appears later in the symphony. In the music
leading up to the famous E minor episode (which will not be discussed here, though),
we hear a long passage (44 bars) with chords sustained for eight and (later) four
bars. Even if they are held in a rhythm which works counter to the three beat bars,
they do not, however, achieve the effect of the syncopated passage in bb. 123-31.
Whereas the earlier passage was so short that the listener did not have a chance to
figure out the rhythmic system, this time each chord is held for so long that we
can easily grasp the system.67 Furthermore, as an eight-bar length is observed, it is
clear that this passage does not work through cognitive frustration (the basis of
Kants mathematical sublime) but through its sheer size. By its vastness it has allusions to the type of infinity which Kant described as central to the experience of
the dynamical sublime. However, obviously the music does not present a real infinity. The music suggests infinity by seemingly going on forever. But of course it
does not literally go on forever. In Burkes Enquiry we find the idea of the artificial
infinity created by succession and uniformity: Our old cathedrals are not literally
infinite, but rather based on a deception that makes the building more extended
than it is.68
Thus, this short analysis shows how the aesthetics of the sublime manifested itself
in a musical form. Of course, some readers might raise the objection that my analysis is a Procrustean one. They might claim that I over-interpret the music in order to
make it fit my overall purpose of a historical outline of the musical sublime. Taking
this protest seriously, the question arises when the musical sublime begins. When
are there sufficient parallels between aesthetics and music to conclude that the music
works within the paradigm of the sublime? This question is, of course, inherently
interesting. However, it is my contention that it is not necessary for me to answer it.
It should be remembered that I concluded from the reception, not my analysis,
when I claimed that the Eroica could be analysed in terms of the aesthetics of the
sublime. Thus, the aim of my analysis was not to argue that the symphony was
sublime but rather to explain in technical terms how it was sublime.

66 It might be argued that the chromatic line in the bass begins with the D in b. 127. However, the

sense of harmonic progression is not established until b. 132.

67 For a discussion of the rhythmic system in bb. 252-75, see Downs, Beethovens New Way , 595.
68 Burke, Philosophical Enquiry, II/9-10.

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IV
To bring our understanding of the musical sublime a bit further, let me draw some
conclusions from this analysis in order to consider the Eroica in the larger perspective of Western aesthetics. Up until the eighteenth century, the history of aesthetics
centred on the question what beauty is. When Plato approached the Idea of the
Beautiful in his dialogues his examples seem to have a cluster of proprieties in common, viz. unity, regularity, and simplicity. Aristotle claimed that a good tragedy should
have an orderly arrangement a view which implies a stress on unity. St Augustine,
asking himself the question What is beauty? answered I marked and perceived that
in bodies themselves there was a beauty from their forming a kind of whole. Thomas
Aquinas stated that, in a homogeneous whole, the whole is made up of parts having
the form of the whole, and that beauty consists in due proportion.69
These normative definitions of art were challenged in the eighteenth century,
most explicitly when Joseph Addison protested that Taste is not to conform to the
Art, but the Art to the Taste.70 Art is not to be measured against objective rules, but
rather against the impression it makes on the perceiver. The aesthetics of the sublime
undoubtedly contributed significantly to this change as early as in that century.71
However, one of the most explicit formulations of the idea of the sublime as a challenge to Western aesthetics is found in Barnett Newmans The Sublime is Now
from 1948.72 This article reads like a manifesto against the hegemony of beauty: The
invention of beauty by the Greeks, that is, their postulate of beauty as an ideal, has
been the bugbear of European art and European aesthetic philosophies. In the plastic arts, Newman sees the Greek ideal challenged by the Gothic or Baroque, in
which the sublime consists of a desire to destroy form. Painting has, however, lacked
far behind the plastic arts until the impressionists began the movement to destroy
the established rhetoric of beauty.73
If, for a moment, we return to the Kantian idea of the sublime, we get a clearer
idea of this change and the opposition of the sublime:

69 Quotations from Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (New York,

1966; Alabama, 1977), 39-46, 61, 92, and 100-1.

70 Spectator, 1/29 (3 Apr. 1711). Available from http://spectator.rutgers.edu/spectator/index.html.

71 See Jerome Stolnitz, Beauty, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York, 1967).

Stolnitz, 264, calls the paradigm shift in eighteenth-century aesthetics a Copernican revolution
when instead of looking outward to the properties of beauty or the art object, it first examined
the experience of the percipient, to determine the conditions under which beauty and art are
appreciated. Even if Stolnitz does not mention it, it is beyond any doubt that Boileaus translation
of the Peri Hupsous contributed to this change.
72 Reprinted in Barnett Newman, Selected Writings and Interviews, ed. John P. ONeill (Berkeley,
1992), 171-73 (appeared originally in The Tigers Eye, 1 (1948), 51-53).
73 Ibid., 171-72.

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... in dem, was wir an [der Natur] erhaben zu nennen pflegen, ist so gar nichts, was auf
besondere objektive Prinzipien und diesen geme Formen der Natur fhrte, da diese
vielmehr in ihrem Chaos oder in ihrer wildesten, regellosesten Unordnung und Verwstung, wenn sich nur Gre und Macht blicken lt, die Ideen des Erhabenen am
meisten erregt.74

The definitions of beauty mentioned above seem to be irreconcilable with the Kantian
sublime when it is described in terms of chaos, irregularity, and disorder. In the
Western understanding of art, a work of art has to be finite, regular, and orderly in
order to be understood as a work of art. Therefore, obviously, in Kants distinction,
a completely sublime work of art can hardly be imagined. In Johann Georg Sulzers
Allgemeine Theorie der Schnen Knste, the same problem is worded as follows: Das
vllig unbegreifliche rhrt uns so wenig, als wenn es gar nicht vorhanden wre.75
In a sense, my analysis has shown how this problem was solved in practical composition. The unstable and sublime passages in the first movement of the Eroica are perpetually counterweighted by stable passages, which fall more easily within the musical
norms around 1800. This constant interaction between the two antagonistic aesthetic
spheres is expressed in the concept of a dialectic struggle used by Judith L. Schwarz
in her analysis of Haydns Farewell Symphony. Thus, apparently without being aware of
this problem, Schwartz seems to have contributed to solving it by explicitly contemplating the sublime and the beautiful dialectically. By this insight, she underscores that the
sublime is dependent on the beautiful. As a work of art has to present itself as a united
and orderly phenomenon, the overall aesthetics of a work of art cannot be sublime. In
short, according to the Western conception of art, beauty is form. However, deviations from this form can be made and when this happens, the opposition between the
beautiful and the sublime may materialize this is what Schwartz calls a dialectic
struggle. This insight was also expressed by Gustav Schilling who, writing in an age in
which musical dictionaries had entries on the sublime, discussed the sublime in music:
Auch die Unfrmliche, ungeheure Gre ist erhaben aber nicht schn. So wie aber auf
dem Gebiete der Kunst berhaupt nichts Unfrmliches statt haben kann, so kann hier
auch nichts Erhabenes ohne Schnheit zugleich, gebildet werden, wohl aber etwas
Schnes ohne Erhabenheit, denn die Schnheit ist Ziel der Kunst ...76

As I have argued, Schilling claims that nothing completely formless is possible in

art. However, as the reception of the Eroica shows, numerous listeners perceived
this symphony as bordering on formlessness. We hear an echo of the Kantian sublime experience in this reception the ocean in a musical experience, so to speak.77
74 Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, 23, B78.
75 Johann Georg Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der Schnen Knste (2nd edn., Leipzig, 1792), ii, 98.
76 Encyclopdie der gesammten musikalischen Wissenschaften oder Universal-Lexicon der Tonkunst, ed.

Gustav Schilling (Stuttgart, 1835-38, suppl. vol. 1841), ii, 616.

77 As it should be clear by now, I do not consider the musical sublime experience of the ocean a

programmatic phenomenon.

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Thus, the Eroica obviously challenged the hegemony of beauty in the field of aesthetics it was not with Barnett Newman in 1948 that this challenge began. In
Western aesthetics, a countermovement has existed at least since the late seventeenth
century. But in music, an important quantum leap was taken with the Eroica. The
question is, of course, how far it is possible to move away from the aesthetics of
beauty. How far can we revolutionize music into the realm of the sublime? Not too
far, I have argued. If we are to bring the Kantian Ocean into the concert hall, we
have to compromise and let it work on the terms of beauty.

Summary
In the period around the genesis of Beethovens Eroica Symphony, the sublime was an
immensely important aesthetic category. Through Schillers adaptation of it into the sphere of
arts, Kants treatment of the subject (in Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790) in particular reverberated
in musical debates. Thus, around the turn of the century we find a number of essays in leading
music periodicals (e.g. Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung) which attempt to define the musical
sublime. Departing from the fact that numerous linguistic tropes from this discussion surface
in the reception of the Eroica, this article presents a musical analysis which has as its main
claim that this particular work falls within the paradigm of the sublime. In continuation of
this analysis, it is discussed which general conclusions on the possibility of the musical sublime
may be derived from this concrete appearance. This leads to the conclusion that the musical
sublime only makes sense in an interplay with musical beauty.

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